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Tangled Cupcakes

When it comes to throwing a Rapunzel inspired party… it’s sort of hard to avoid the Tower. I was tempted to make a doll cake next to an extravagant yet fabulous rice crispy and fondant tower for my daughter Sophie’s 4th birthday.

However, we were hosting a brunch at a local park and I thought Tangled cupcakes would be easier to transport. I now know “Ease” is a relative term.

Tower cupcakes for the kids and lime paint pallet cupcakes for the adults.

That’s when I found inspiration from Bird On A Cake. Her entire site is amazing. In particular is her easy to follow tutorial to make Rapunzel Tower Cupcakes. The key is really to take your time and NOT multitask.

Here are few tricks I picked up along the way.

My cups runneth over. Yikes!

It is really important to under fill your cupcakes. Fill just past the base of the cone as it opens into the “bowl.”

Let off some steam!

I used a metal skewer to prick the bottom of the cones to let out the steam. I think this helped keep my second batch from imploding.

Cover muffin pan with tin foil to support cones.

I transported my cupcakes to the oven and to the park this way. I added the sugar cones once we arrived.

Watch out for balmy breezes.

Our party was blessed with balmy tropical breezes. Great for the guests- devastating for the cupcakes. Fortunately vines are a bit random and the icing on the towers did not suffer as much as the paper table-cloth. We used our pinata as a wind block and saved the party.

One last side note. I made the paint pallets with sugar paste for two reasons; 1. I had the ingredients. 2. In theory fondant is interchangeable with sugar paste.

Rapunzel’s art pallet cupcakes for the adults.

I disagree.

In the future, I will only use fondant. The ingredients for fondant are more expensive but, the dough is more pliable, more forgiving and does not dry out at break neck speed as compared to sugar paste.

Picture Perfect!

Despite the baking mis-steps, I had great fun trying these new methods for cupcake baking and decorating. Sometimes, it takes a time or two to get it right, but at the end of the day, it’s just cake. The birthday girl always looks picture perfect blowing out her candles.